Perhaps you are planning your e-business and heard or read an article that mentioned the mashups. But, what is a mashup?

According to the Wikipedia, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into an integrated experience. The etymology of this term possibly derives from its similar use in pop music.

Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) –the ones used in many blogs, web services and many more.

Many people are experimenting with mashups using Microsoft, Google, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, and Yahoo APIs, which has led to the creation of Mashup Editors

I constantly see many useful mashups as many other that are really scrap. As mentioned before, anyone can create a mashup in their site. The most important thing before doing this is evaluate the “What for”, the idea.

There’s also a lot of already done mashups so can use them in your site; So, if you are planning to develop a special application in order to gatheer information from other sources, just check before if it exists in the mashups directories. Good Luck!

Below is an interesting video of how to quickly create a mashup using Microsoft Popfly Mashups editor.